RE: [school-discuss] Homeschooling & FLOS

["Hultquist, Nancy" <nhultquist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK, I am going to jump in now.  I teach in a face-to-face school, but I have studied online and currently teach college courses online.  I have also played with developing a course for older elementary kids online. The problems of learning/teaching online are the blindness that must go along with it.  A charter school that was BOTH face-to-face as well as online would be the best of both worlds. The online section could be extremely individual and detailed.  Face-to-face instruction would bring in the community aspects of learning.  Then when learners got back to online they not only would know each other but they would be more open to invest their time in discussions about a topic. 

Technology empowers greater learning.  Technology is just the tool to get at that greater learning. Some learners need the flexibility of not always being together.  It could be because of special learning needs, health needs, behavior needs, parent travel...a host of reasons.  Face-to-face sessions could be designed to maximize the time and interaction.  

Special needs kids just might not be able to "do" the long school days with all of the "socialized constraints".  Sometimes I struggle with them!  Some kids need longer to think, technology provides that!  The possibilities for greater learning in a combined online/face-to-face environment for elementary, junior high, as well as high school students are endless.  Many of the hours spent at school are wasted with management activities and other non-learning activities. Why do we stay in this factory model of education?

It is near impossible to provide the individual attention that is needed during group face-to-face instruction.AND it is extremely difficult to build a dynamic learning community online. Time interacting with each other provides the sight needed to invest greater time in online thoughts and discussions.  

As I have done, I have ease-dropped on this conversation without getting involved for many months.  This is not acceptable in the online classroom.  Yet, the fake & forced interaction in the typical online classroom are also not dynamic enough for the depth of learning a person would desire.  

From what I have experienced, online learning is often scripted stealing away much of the individuality in the course room.  This can be good because the learning of essential skills can me insured, but learning flows along creative lines as well.  I think you could harness both modes of learning.

Nancy E. Hultquist
Brandon Elementary School
nhultquist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-schoolforge-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Daniel Howard
Sent: Mon 3/17/2008 7:01 PM
To: schoolforge-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [school-discuss] Homeschooling & FLOS
 
Um, OK that was a dream...a cyber charter school is just an online 
school that supports home schooling and/or flexible schedules for say 
atheletes, not a school that uses the charter approach to divorce 
themselves from district management/oversight, and in the case dreamed 
about, from district IT management/oversight.

What we need is the concept of a Charter school that applies primarily 
to IT, but maybe you have to do the whole Charter thing to have that.

I think I will take this as encouragement to contact any charter schools 
in Ga just to see if they can more easily do IT things like Opensource 
that break from district/county IT management.

Best,
Daniel


Daniel Howard wrote:
> Cyber charter schools?  This sounds interesting...Can you or anyone else 
> elaborate?  If there's a precedent for a school to become independent of 
> their district IT department without having to go through all of the 
> paperwork for curricular charter status, that would be of great interest 
> to this group, I suspect.  Daniel
> 
> Mark Rauterkus wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I think that the questions about homeschooling are important.
>>
>> Likewise, it might be most productive to ask many of the same 
>> questions about "charter schools." There are many 'cyber charter 
>> schools' that have budgets and the capacity for hiring programmers, 
>> teachers,  and rely upon computers that are given to the students / 
>> families.
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Ta.
>>
>>
>> Mark Rauterkus Mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:Mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> http://Rauterkus.blogspot.com
>> http://Elect.Rauterkus.com
>>
>>
> 
> 


-- 
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation

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